How Naruto Met Raven
by Moderation
Summary: A tale of True Love, Explosions, Comedy, and Suspension of Disbelief. Warning: Naruto is hit by cars, a lot...


**How Naruto Met Raven**

**By Moderation**

**Disclaimer: I own neither Naruto nor Teen Titans.**

* * *

Naruto loved Raven.

It was one of those facts of life that was an irrevocable constant. The sky was blue. Grass is green. Water is wet. And Naruto loved Raven.

He couldn't say exactly when he fell in love with her, just that he did. Although, if he was forced to describe it, he might say it started with the day he met her.

He remembered like it was just yesterday. The weather was calm, birds were chirping, the Apocalypse had arrived in the form of the Juubi, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Yep.

Anyway… Naruto was doing battle with a supernatural force of chaos and destruction, when out of nowhere…

He died.

Oops.

That put a small damper on his day.

Sigh, and it was really turning out to be one of his better ones.

Oh well, the next thing he knows, he's waking up in a hospital bed in one of those patient gowns- you know, the ones that never seem to cover you're backside up all the way? Really, that's just cruel and unusual punishment. Naruto was sure that it was some kind of conspiracy to condition him against being injured on threat of embarrassment-while random nurses are all milling about, checking on charts, poking him with needles, and the like.

Naruto would rather deal with the Juubi than the needles to be honest.

Apparently, he had been asleep for five days, which was a new record to be honest- now if only he could aim for four. The doctors and nurses told him he would be charged for the service as soon as they identified him, which was surprising because normally Granny would take care of it.

They told him that they didn't know who Granny was.

He told them that she was the Fifth Hokage.

They asked who the Hokage was.

Now, Naruto knew that he wasn't the sharpest knife in the set, but he was pretty sure by then that he wasn't in Konoha.

So he left to investigate. The nurses tried to stop him, which was weird, because it was only the third floor, and he could walk on walls, so he was covered.

Yeah, that was when Naruto found out he couldn't use chakra.

Falling three stories into a cement floor hurts!

Anyway, three days later, he left the hospital to explore the city he wound up in.

It was strange to say the least. Buildings were made almost completely out of metal and where taller than the Hokage monument. It reminded him of the time Jiraya took him to Ame, just less depressing.

Naruto also discovered the bane of his existence, rated just under the Daimyo's wife's cat: Those infernal possessed devil wagons! Oh sure, they called them cars and automobiles, but Naruto was sure that they were some kind of evil alien life form out to kill him.

His dislike for them was in no ways biased due to the fact that he got hit by one right out of the hospital and had to spend five more days recovering. Not at all.

After managing to escape the heavy guard surrounding his room- the staff wasn't taking any more chances that he might escape- Naruto decided two things.

One: The city was unlike anything he ever saw, and he was very far from home.

Two: He was hungry.

Deciding to do something about number two first, Naruto went out to the nearest restaurant he could find. Some place that apparently sold something called pizza.

This was also the point that Naruto realized he was reading, thinking, and speaking in a different language.

Most people would obsess over such a crucial fact, but Naruto- who noticed that most answers came when one waited long enough, rather than when one relentlessly pursued it- decided to just deal with it later. Preferably after he ate something, because hospital food was nasty, and he would be damned if he didn't get any real food to eat first, before he inevitably wound up back at the hospital, which he always did.

Naruto started to walk towards the restaurant when he noticed that a baby carriage had been left in the middle of the road.

Without taking notice of the bus rolling downhill towards him, Naruto reached out and picked the baby up. He noticed several things at once.

One: the baby was fake.

Two: the fake baby explodes.

Three: He was still quite durable and was able to take the explosion without being blown off his feet.

Four: He was in what appeared to be a gang battle between a bunch of teens around his age.

Five: The gothic girl waving dark beams of mass destruction was pretty cute.

Six: It would have been better to have been blown off his feet by the fake baby-bomb, because then he wouldn't have been standing in front of the runaway bus.

Coincidentally, the bus hit him.

When he woke up, Naruto was immediately aware that he wasn't in the hospital.

Sure, he was in a white room, hooked up to an IV, and the room smelled like disinfectant, but he wasn't in a hospital. He could tell because of the lack of guards.

When someone finally came in to check on Naruto, it was the gothic girl from before. Naruto remembered that she spoke to him, but couldn't remember the topic they discussed.

She was even cuter up close!

Sakura who?

When she left, Naruto stayed in the room trying to occupy his time. He was largely unsuccessful, and was quickly bored out of his mind.

He was about to call for someone, maybe they'd bring a magazine, when an explosion suddenly rocked the building.

Nevermind, they were probably busy.

Naruto spent the next several minutes twiddling his fingers when his curiosity finally got the better of him.

He rose from his bed, wincing from the soreness and sharp pain in his limbs- give him a break, he was hit by several vehicles in less than a week. Naruto snuck through the building largely unnoticed, a thick tension in the air telling him that stealth was a good idea at the moment.

He stopped right outside the door to what seemed to be the living area and placed his ear against the door.

Less than a minute of listening gave Naruto an accurate enough picture. The opposing gang from before had taken over the base and kicked out the other kids, the Titans.

Naruto entirely sure, but he assumed that everyone involved had some form of power. After all, regular people don't dress in spandex, while a depressing majority of those with powers do.

Look at himself. He was one of the most powerful ninja in his village and he wore an orange jumpsuit. While it did wonders training him for stealth, it was an obnoxious color that he first wore out of a childish grudge and then kept wearing out of nostalgia.

And look at people like Gai and Lee…

Actually, sorry. That was going too far…

Back to the matter at hand, Naruto was very sure that these people weren't very nice and didn't belong here. However, he didn't know anything about either groups, so this could very well be the "good guys".

Looking back at the figures through the door crack, Naruto blanched at how they ransacked the place. Well, they definitely weren't "good" per say…

Naruto thought back to the purple-haired goddess that he had met before. She seemed nice. Hmmm.

Naruto nodded. Yep, he would help the goddess for now. He was pretty sure she was the good guy. He wasn't biased at all, no sir.

After thirty minutes of preparation, Naruto was hanging from the rafters near the ceiling when he pulled a small air horn from one of his scrolls. Sealing still worked, thankfully, but he only had a scroll of prank supplies.

He quickly let out a small blast before sealing it away, and held his pair of scissors in preparation over a rope.

As soon as one of the three intruders walked in, Naruto cut the rope, causing paint cans to come swinging in front of him. Unfortunately, the intruder was a midget, so the paint can missed him entirely.

Frowning at the insults hurled at him by the confused intruder who didn't see him yet, Naruto cut a second rope and smiled when the paint can detached and fell onto the midget, knocking him out. The can first exploded and then showered him with pink superglue, one of Naruto's homemade prank items.

Naruto immediately cut two more lines, the first dropping a small vial of blood onto a sealing array located in front of the door. The effects were obvious, the pink-haired intruder rushing into the room and immediately being suspended in midair the moment she stepped into the seal.

The second line released a counterbalance, activating an improvised battering ram made from an armchair. The piece of furniture went crashing into the girl, slamming her into a wall and knocking her unconscious.

Naruto waited patiently as the finally intruder rushed into the room. The mammoth-like man spun around wildly, looking for the unseen foe.

Naruto snipped the final string, activating a light switch that illuminated a pedestal in the middle of the room, drawing the man's attention to it immediately.

Walking over to the painfully obvious trap, the giant picked up the sandwich and sniffed it a moment before taking a large bit of it.

Naruto watched in amusement as the man toppled over, the sedatives taking effect instantly.

Naruto gently climbed down from the hiding spot in the rafters before tying the intruders up with a liberal amount of ninja wire that he had stored in one of his scrolls.

Making sure that they would all be immensely uncomfortable and unable to escape, Naruto stood back and looked around the room he was in, and blanched at the condition it was in.

If the purple-haired goddess returned to find her home like this, she would probably be very sad.

He couldn't have that!

Several hours later, Naruto was sitting at the counter in the kitchen, eating a sandwich when a group of teens and the purple-haired goddess came bursting into the doors, ready for combat, and stopping short when they caught sight of the tied up trio.

"Hiya, I'm Naruto." Naruto waved over at them, beckoning the teens to the counter where he handed them each a sandwich.

A short interrogation later, and the group of self-proclaimed Heroes were all gaping at the blonde in shock, trying desperately to pick their jaws off the floor and keep from laughing. By then, the trio had awoken and struggled with the bonds only to eventually give up and instead tried to glare the blonde to death.

It was largely ineffectual.

Later, once the criminals were all taken to jail, Naruto explained to the Titans that he was both homeless and an amnesiac.

Both lies of course, but they served his purpose. Besides, he couldn't just say he was from another world and that he had just died a while ago. Naruto was pretty sure that would land him in the nuthouse.

They weren't really lies anyway. He didn't know how he got there, and he really didn't have a home since he accidentally blew it up and transported it to Hell after a small incident where he was experimenting with seals and it… well, failed. Spectacularly.

It was the green kid to first suggest the solution, though it sounded more like a joke at first.

Nobody was laughing when Naruto accepted.

Sure, he would make a great temporary butler.

So long as he received Room and Board and a small allowance, he was happy.

Besides, this way, he would be able to spend time with the purple-haired goddess.

Oops, did he say that out loud?

Judging by the size of that blush on her face, Naruto would have to say yes.


End file.
